Sunday, 18 November 2012

An open letter to The Guardian

Dear
Guardian,

For years you
have taken it upon yourself to single-handedly defame my country the United
Arab Emirates. For reasons unknown the UAE has had to endure your endless
bombardments of smear campaigns and ugliness in the name of free journalism.

In articles
dating as far back as 2000 you have attacked the Emirates in all your sections
from politics to travel. You have sent reporters with a mission to excavate
only the negative no matter how minute it may be and inflated it into certain
truths. You have only to enter the name of any Emirate in your website’s search
box and watch as the archives of ugliness start to unfold. Pages worth of
headlines that will make anyone who knows the UAE shudder. Your commentators
and news reports have called our buildings “the nastiest you’ve ever seen” our
lifestyle “a place where the
worst of western capitalism and the worst of Gulf Arab racism meet in a
horrible vortex” labeled our rulers “dictators” and even advised Dr. Who not to
film on our land!

All
this unsubstantiated drivel we have heard from you throughout the years and
have remained silent simply because we have taken it as just that.

Eventually
when your army of pen-pushers failed to paint the bleak image of the UAE that
they have set out to do you stepped up to this one-sided battle and wrote an
editorial denouncing my country, but why?

For
anyone who has ever been to the UAE or chose to make it their home, for the
people of UAE this is mind-boggling to say the least. The UAE is a peaceful
country; its rulers are as much of the people as the people are a part of this
country. Emiratis are a welcoming, tolerant people who have in only 41 years
opened up their doors and overcome the culture shock that comes with such a
transformation with class and grace.

The
country’s foreign affairs are solid and its worldwide humanitarian efforts are
ones all nations must strive to emulate. One has only to visit the UAE, talk to
its people and the people who have chosen to raise their children in it to know
what it truly is.

We
understand your bewilderment at the success of this great nation’s experiment
in unity and peace. We do not blame you for feeling a tad bit confused about
its resilience in the face of economic adversity and the continuous drive of
its people. But does that really warrant all this resentment from you?

Granted,
there are many aspects to our country that need to be developed and revised and
we are well on our way to doing so. 41 years old this December the UAE’s
achievements, cultural sophistication and tolerance transcends its young age as
a united nation. In our 41 years we have not waged wars, we have sought peace,
we have not divided our land based on race, we have embraced more than 200 nationalities
as our own. We have tolerated judgment and criticism from nations who have
fought and aided wars on either side of the globe and listened to them preach
their version of democracy while they take actions of which hypocrisy is
ashamed.

We
are an educated nation with a 97% literacy race and we have heard you loud and
clear. Now it is time for you to hear us. Twelve years of this one-sided
reporting is putting a damper on your impartiality and frankly hurting your
credibility as a respected paper. Any person in their right mind, whether they
have been to the UAE or not, cannot believe that a country as popular and loved
as this one would not have one good aspect to report or comment on. How could
people from all walks of the earth flock to a nation that is as ugly as you
say? That is a true anomaly, a real wonder of the world, a mystery that has yet
to be explained and based on your reporting I think it never will be.

This article was published in The Gulf Today newspaper on 18th November, 2012.Arabic version of this article was published in Al Khaleej newspaper on the same day: http://bit.ly/TQXwPY